About Seven Days

Seven Days of Opening Nights is a performing-arts festival that takes place each February and spotlights Florida State University's commitment to the arts — music, theatre, dance, visual art, film and literature. Now widely embraced as the high point on Tallahassee's cultural calendar, the festival began in 1999, thanks to FSU President Sandy D’Alemberte, and was an immediate success with both the university and the Tallahassee community.

The 2011 festival marked Seven Days’ return to Ruby Diamond Concert Hall, which has undergone a mammoth $35-million renovation to become one of the finest concert halls in the Southeast. The festival also uses other on-campus venues – such as the Nancy Smith Fichter Dance Theatre, Opperman Music Hall, Museum of Fine Art and Student Life Cinema – as well as off-campus venues, including Tallahassee Community College’s Turner Auditorium, Florida A&M University’s Lee Hall, Pebble Hill Plantation and the Tallahassee Museum of Natural History.

Education is integral to the festival, and the majority of the artists who perform at Seven Days also spend time with FSU students in master-classes, giving invaluable insights into craft, process and art. Students and faculty are frequently invited to perform onstage with the artists, as well. This year, Seven Days will launch a new initiative targeting arts-education for grades K-12, which will offer educational performances for students by eight of our visiting artists over the course of the festival.

"Seven Days of Opening Nights is much more than a string of great performances," explains Sally McRorie, Dean of the College of Visual Arts, Theatre and Dance. "It engages our students, faculty, community, and beyond with quality arts and artists. That culture of achievement is what a truly great university provides."

Why 'Seven Days'?

Good question. In the festival's first year (1999), the festival lasted seven days. That hasn't happened since, but the name stuck. By this time, most people know that '7 Days' is a metaphor for quality, not a measure of quantity.